Hola all. Massawyrm here.
It’s hard to ignore the lasting effect Peckinpah’s classic STRAW DOGS has had on the face of filmmaking. Released at beginning of the gritty cinema-renaissance that would lead to the golden age of thoughtful 70’s filmmaking, STRAW DOGS pushed the envelope of sex and violence and became as well known for the controversy it stirred up as it was for the incredible quality of the film itself. But much like many films of the time, it was, shall we say, less than faithful to its original source material. In Gordon Williams' taut thriller THE SIEGE OF TRENCHER’S FARM, Peckinpah found a great story and a vehicle for many of the things he wanted to say about the era he lived in. But many of those things quite simply weren’t present in the original material. Now, after nearly forty years of being out of print, THE SIEGE OF TRENCHER’S FARM is back and ready to be dug into once more.
The differences between the book and the film are stark and radical. Many of the most controversial elements you are familiar with aren’t in the source material. Fundamentally, they are two very different stories, and while there is no way in hell that I am going to argue that STRAW DOGS is in any way inferior to TRENCHER’S FARM, I will say that the book is absolutely worth seeking out on its own merits. While the primary story of a wimp becoming a man during the siege of his own home is very much the same, the details of it and the parties involved are altered dramatically. And it makes for something that stands on its own.
Williams' novel is less of a visceral gut punch and more of a complex morality play in which a liberal American professor is faced with a set of circumstances that challenge the beliefs he’s long held in the safety of his academic life. After moving his family into a small, backwoods part of poor, rural England, he tries to assimilate into a community that prefers to keep to itself. But when he accidentally runs down an escaped child murderer during a blinding snowstorm – on the same night a local’s young child goes missing – the stage is set for the godfather of all home invasion stories.
Most interesting about Williams’ tale is that he very carefully sets up the events that lead to the reader understanding exactly why the invasion takes place. The invaders aren’t angry monsters; they are well intentioned drunken idiots who make a terrible mistake and become overwhelmed by their own demons as they fight for self-preservation. There is no history between the men and their victims – and the legendary rape scene doesn’t occur here. Instead, it is all a series of terrible misfortunes that pile up and force the professor to confront his own passive, pacifist nature and dares him to become the man he’s always idolized in films.
The book is an easy, breezy read – the second half of which is so tense that I didn’t leave the couch for so much as a cup of coffee before its conclusion. I read it cover to cover in one sitting, fascinated by how elegantly Williams turns the screws on his protagonist George Magruder. George never makes any real mistakes. He does everything diplomatically and intelligently – but fate is unkind and runs him through the wringer to the point that he has no other choice but to fight back. The violence is brutal, unflinching and painfully inept on the part of its participants. These aren’t killers; they are men making do with whatever they can find and fighting for their own survival. And while Williams is never so ambiguous as to let you completely sympathize with the attackers, he does let you root through their thoughts enough to realize just how scared, angry and troubled they all are. It is a wonderfully thoughtful morality tale about just how quickly some men will abandon their ideologies in order to save their own skin.
The book’s only real flaw is one inherent in the era in which it was written. By today’s standards the book can be taken as fairly misogynistic. Magruder’s wife is written as someone bitter that she didn’t marry a real man, and there are moments in the book when she desires nothing more than for her husband to smack the shit out of her and show her who’s boss. It never gets so bad that it becomes offensive, but it is definitely rooted in Williams’ ideal of what a man is – something many of you may be most familiar with as that presented in MAD MEN – and his belief that this is what women of his time wanted. This is perhaps the strongest contrast between the book and subsequent film, changing not only the nature of the husband/wife relationship, but also adding an out-of-step-with-the-times element to the work’s conclusion. However, seen through the lens of the era it is from, it stands more as an example of its time than as overtly and deliberately sexist.
On the whole the book is a great afternoon read, the kind easily devoured in a single sitting. Williams’ sparse, almost Spartan prose is littered with a handful of really great turns of the phrase and a strong sense of narrative timing that keeps you turning page after page. Far from your standard potboiler, THE SIEGE OF TRENCHER’S FARM is a classic of the genre and a perfect example of how to take a simple, violent encounter and stretch it for well over a hundred pages without ever feeling like it is simply spinning its wheels.
THE SIEGE OF TRENCHER’S FARM is available as of today as an e-book and in paperback on August 16th.
Titan Books was kind enough to send along an excerpt of one of the book’s pivotal scenes – which you’ll find below. Fans of the film will instantly note a few major differences - most notably that the Magruder's have a daughter and that they don't know the men who are invading their home apart from just having met them less than an hour before. Also be sure to check out the excerpt sent to DREAD CENTRAL, which is the book’s fantastic opening detailing its rural setting, the parish of Dando.
Although it had been what she wanted, to let the men outside have Niles and leave them in peace, George’s apparent change of mind didn’t make Louise feel any less irritated. Whatever the real reason for her discontent – and she didn’t really know herself – she felt as though she was swamped by a deep sense of grudge. It showed no signs of evaporating even now that he’d seemingly come to see things as they really were. Everything about him now irritated her. He was so damned artificial. Just for a moment she’d thought he was going to belt her and funnily enough she’d felt a sense of relief, but then he’d taken hold of himself. That was part of it, he was so damned anxious to keep control of himself. He acted the role of a reasonable, steady, dependable husband. In her general state of unreasonable resentment she saw this as an insult; if he was sincere he wouldn’t need to act, to keep such tight control of himself.
She left him trying to get some life on the telephone and went upstairs to Karen’s bedroom. She looked at her daughter with the wary eyes of a woman who had betrayal in mind and she could see herself for the bitch she was and she could find nothing loving to say.
“What’s happening, Mother?”
“Why don’t you go to sleep, Karen!”
“They keep shouting that man’s name, is he a bad man? What’s happened to Janice Hedden, hasn’t she come back yet? I’m frightened.”
“Don’t be silly now. They won’t be here much longer, they’ve probably gone away already, they were just worried about Janice, that’s all.”
“Did that man do something horrible to Janice? I didn’t like him, he had a funny face, Mother.”
“For God’s sake, Karen! Go to sleep will you? I’ve told you there’s nothing wrong, that’s all I –”
The whole house seemed to be hit by one big bang. Somebody kicked the front door. At the same time there was a dull thudding noise from the other side of the house. Somewhere in the din she heard glass breaking.
“I’m scared,” Karen sobbed.
Good God, she thought, what’s George doing now? Why the hell isn’t he speaking to them, telling them they could take Niles away?
“Stay here and don’t cry,” she snapped at Karen as she left the bedroom, slamming the door behind her, but forgetting to lock it.
As she crossed the upstairs landing she heard Niles moaning in the lavatory. It served him damn well right, she thought. It was the best place for him if he had to be in the house at all. She felt her temper rising.
“George! What the hell are you doing?”
“Christ, they’re all over the place,” he said, standing in the gloom of the sitting-room, a dark shape in the red glow from the fire.
“Damn you, George, I’m sick of it!”
She knew it was up to her. George was hopeless. She cursed as she caught her shin on the edge of the coffee table. She found the handle of the door into the hall.
“Where are you going, Louise?”
“I’m coming,” she shouted.
George realised she was going to open the front door. He strode towards the hall, forgetting about the armchair. He lost his balance as he bumped into it and fell forward, crashing with the chair to the floor.
“Louise!”
“Stop kicking the door, damn you,” she was shouting. “It’s this damned chain.”
George scrambled to his feet and moved towards her, his hands up to protect his face in case he ran into the open hall door.
He got to her just as she was slipping the chain catch along its slide. He caught hold of her wrists and pulled her away from the door.
“Let me go!”
“What are you doing? Those guys are crazy!”
Her voice was grimly controlled.
“George, if you don’t open that door right now I’m going to leave you. I’m not joking. Open that door and let them take that man out of this house or I’m going.”
“But they’ll –”
“Did you hear me? It’s him they want, that thing upstairs. Make up your mind, George, he goes or I go.”
He knew she was right. He was a civilised man and there was nothing he could do but open the door and let them drag Niles out of the house. Tomorrow they’d pay, he’d make sure of that. But tonight, now, they were like a pack of wolves and there was nothing he could do.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell him.”
He shot the bolt and turned the Yale handle. The door opened about four inches until the chain went tight.
“Tell them to stop it,” he said, putting his face to the gap. “You can have Niles. But if you harm him I’m going to make sure the police know exactly who you are, you and your pals.”
Tom Hedden had his hand against the door, shoving at it.
“Did you hear what I said?” George asked. He knew they would harm Niles, he knew exactly what they’d do to him, but nobody would blame him.
“Let me in the door.” Tom Hedden’s voice was a snarl of hate.
“I said you aren’t going to do anything to him.”
Tom Hedden was maddened by rage and drink and frustration. He rammed his shoulder against the door. George let go of his hold. The door pulled hard on the chain and then rebounded, the Yale lock clicking as it slammed shut. Tom Hedden hit it again with his shoulder.
“I’ show you, dirty Yank bastard,” he roared,
“FOR GOD’S SAKE, GEORGE, OPEN THE DOOR!”
Before he could reach the lock handle he was deafened by a noise that hit him and Louise like a blow on the face. For a second they stood still, the deafening boom pounding in their heads. Then, acting instinctively, he grabbed at Louise and pushed her towards the sitting-room. Like a dream in which nameless horrors are instantly recognisable, he knew that the man outside had fired his shotgun. Louise said something but his ears were full of a dull roar. He tried to speak but he couldn’t hear his own words.
They clung together in the shelter of the wall…
When they heard the boom of the shotgun the others came running round to the front of the house.
“Open the bloody door!” Hedden kept shouting. When Norman Scutt realised what had happened he knew the answer to one thing that had bothered him. Tom Hedden’s shotgun would do any killing they had to do. Hedden was out of his mind, mad enough to shoot the lot of them. The thought made him happier. You had to think of Number One. He knew what they had to do if they weren’t going to be locked up for ten years, but he hadn’t reckoned on killing them himself. Better for Tom – and Cawsey – to do it. That way, even if they were caught, he could get out of it. He’d say Hedden had the gun and he’d been trying to stop him.
“You got more cartridges?” he asked.
“Aye, some,” said Tom Hedden.
“You’d better get a couple in then. You could blow that door down, eh?”
He and Voizey and Phil Riddaway stood back to watch what Tom Hedden would do next. Chris Cawsey slipped along the front of the house. Tom Hedden wasn’t going to get all the fun.
Until next time friends,
Massawyrm
